Deep within this saltwater cave in Bermuda,
marine biologists are studying tiny organisms which
may have been stranded here during the age of the
dinosaurs. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse
of the Planet.
Dr. Tom Iliffe has dived into hundreds of these
caves, located mostly on islands around the world.
The life-forms which have survived in this dark
environment have been here a long, long, time.
“We’re diving into caves that give us a
glimpse of what life was like very early on in the
history of life on Earth. It’s a literal time
machine where we can see what conditions were like
millions of years ago. We can see organisms that
probably existed in the early oceans on Earth.”
Biologists were surprised to find that the tiny
crustaceans living in these caves have more in
common with fossil specimens than with their distant
modern relatives such as crabs and shrimp.
Interestingly enough, their only true kin can be
found in other deep saltwater caves.
“Many of the animals that we find in isolated
saltwater caves have close relatives inhabiting
saltwater caves on other islands or even other
oceans. Indeed we’ve found animals that are closely
related to cave species from the Caribbean,
occurring and inhabiting saltwater caves in
Australia on the opposite sides of the Earth.”
Tom Iliffe believes that these animals originally
invaded underwater caves along the coast of an
ancient super-continent. As this giant land mass
broke up, the fragments drifted apart, and became
the continents that we know today. The tiny
creatures in these caves were separated by distance
and frozen in time.